


Recognition

by weakinteraction



Category: Exalted (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-26 01:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16209875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Captured on a mission into Thorns, Anja finds herself face to face with the Mask of Winters' most loyal deathknight for the first time.  Or perhaps, not the first time.





	Recognition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raininshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raininshadows/gifts).



Anja runs through the streets. The same streets she used to run as a carefree child, recognising them even though they have changed unutterably.

Thorns is a shadowland now, a twilight region half in Creation, half in the Underworld, a liminal region, a portal to the endless domain of death and decay.

But it is still her city. She will protect it until the end. As long as any free person draws breath in the city, she will protect them. She is a loyal member of the Silver Pact. But she is still a child of Thorns, and "never flee, never surrender" applies just as well to her home city as to any engagement Ma-Ha-Suchi might choose to entangle her in.

Most of the citizens who have not sought to escape, or ended up as ghosts, cower in fear, too terrified of their new Neverborn ruler and the deathknights to act. A brave few resist, and while Anja keeps her distance from them, she helps them where she can. But there are also those who willingly submit to the Mask of Winters's rule. Such are the ones pursuing her now, loyal vassals of one or another of the deathknights who carve the remnants of the city up into personal fiefdoms.

She was careful -- or at least, as careful as she ever is -- but it seems as though they found her quickly when she entered the city.

Anja runs through the streets. Evasion, not fleeing, she tells herself. And she is winning the race: her pursuers are not as fast as her.

She reaches a shadowed alley and waits, back to the wall. She has not lost her pursuers completely, but she is out of their sight and that is enough.

She shifts, her body flexing and adapting. It feels _right_ , as it always does.

Each time, she is a little closer to losing herself in the wildness. But the cat inside her does not care, and it is the cat that is in control now.

She springs upwards onto the tiny lip of the window of one of the crude apartments above, in which one of the hapless citizens of Thorns who still remain lives out their cursed half-life.

A shout: "There!" and she knows that she will not be able to evade capture so easily. The deathknight's coterie who chase her have been warned about her abilities.

No matter. She is still fast, and agile.

It is only as she approaches the market square that she realises she has been forced in a particular direction; that a trap has been sprung.

She will teach these ghouls -- no, miserable wretches who aspire to the status of ghouls -- the cost of trying to entrap one who has been Exalted by the Moon. She runs at them, tearing with claws and teeth. The wiser ones spring backwards to evade her; the foolish ones are soon on the floor, clutching at their damaged legs.

But they have weapons forged of elements not seen in Creation in an age, weapons the Neverborn have hoarded in the Underworld. She realises that this is a squad that has been assembled, equipped and sent out for a very specific mission: to capture her.

They have her now: wherever she goes they will capture her; behind the masked bladecarriers stand archers, the tips of their arrows glistening with unholy fire. If she tries to escape she will be undone -- literally, her Essence dissipating and becoming corrupted.

The wall she is standing against, like all the rest of the city, is in shadow -- beyond the reach of Blessed Luna, beyond the reach even of the Unconquered Sun -- and yet there is a deeper shadow still against it, growing taller and wider as the entity casting it approaches the intersection. "Well, well, well," comes a drawling voice. "Thorns' pet Lunar, cornered at last. This might almost make today passably interesting."

Anja tries desperately to escape, but the vassals have her surrounded. She lashes out, biting one of them on the calf. He flinches away; the others kick her. She evades most of their blows but is still left winded.

As the deathknight approaches, Anja feels a coldness steal over her. Worse than a coldness, the touch of death itself. She feels as though her body is squirming, trying to change into her hybrid form. She resists, even if it would be to her advantage in the fight. She will not allow someone else to control her.

The creeping, crawling feeling of her skin is too much though. She gives in to it, switching back to her human form.

It is impossible for her to change shape against her volition, but she has never had to exert such willpower to prevent it before. Just from the power of the unknown charm, she knows that this deathknight must be none other than the Mask of Winters's lieutenant, Maiden of the Mirthless Smile.

If even half the stories are true, she is an opponent that Anja cannot hope to defeat.

She looks up, determined not to show the fear she is feeling.

But fear is soon replaced by something very different. As their eyes meet, Anja can tell that they are both experiencing the same double shock of recognition.

The part of Anja Silverclaws that is Anja knows with certainty that before her Exaltation, this Abyssal was the girl she met in her childhood who gave her the creeps just from the way she looked at her -- or indeed anybody else -- as though she was nothing more than meat; at best, perhaps, an interesting specimen.

And the part of Anja Silverclaws that is Silverclaws knows with certainty that in the life before this life, this Abyssal was a Solar -- and not just _a_ Solar, _the_ Solar to whom Ingosh was joined by the most sacred and unbreakable of bonds. And not just once, but twice. Most of Anja's memories of the First Age are murky, inchoate, but a few shine brightly ... and a few are of the deepest shame, a secret untellable even to the Pact Elders.

The Maiden laughs for a moment, and perhaps the most disturbing thing of all is that the laugh does have mirth in it. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a name appears: White Wing Passing.

They circle one another, sizing each other up.

The vassals are forgotten now; they have withdrawn, knowing better than to interfere with their mistress's business. They are barely even spectators; for the two combatants, they make unworthy opponents; for the two lovers, they make an irrelevant distraction to a millennia-delayed reunion.

"Come to kill me again?" It is not Maiden's question, though it comes from her mouth.

"I did what was necessary," Ingosh's answer spills out of Anja without her control. His great crime, never detected, the great secret of his Cascading Years: that White Wing Passing had been there too, and that he had had to kill her.

Maiden stretches out a hand, strokes Anja's cheek with an icy finger. "You enjoyed our trysts so little?"

Ingosh's memories that blossom all at once in her mind are a confused blur, but they make Anja's blood run hot in her veins. For a moment, she imagines Maiden doing to her what White Wing Passing used to do to Ingosh. The terrible feeling enters her mind that she would not find such attention as burdensome as Ingosh did, corrupted though her bondmate's Essence is.

And this is her bondmate, for better or for worse.

"That's not what I'm talking about," Anja says. "You endanger our ci-- endanger _ed_ our principality. Making war on everyone around."

And just for a moment, behind the multiple masks, is the girl who was scared and the girl who scared her. Even before her Exaltation, she was a danger to Thorns.

But Maiden's eyes widen at the slip. "Oh, little girl, do you really think Thorns belongs to either of us?" She steps closer, whispers in Anja's ear. "It belongs to the Mask of Winters, just as surely as I belong to him ... just as surely as you will soon belong to me."

"Thorns belongs to all its citizens," Anja says fiercely, even as the treacherous part of her mind is imagining what such "belonging" might mean. "I will not let you use me to control them."

"Oh, you know that you used me just as much as I used you," Maiden says. Another name appears unbidden in Anja's mind: Ironbound Mercy.

"I'm sorry," Anja says, not knowing what she-- what Ingosh is apologising for. "I never wanted--"

"What we want doesn't matter. It always comes down to this, in the end, doesn't it?" Anja tries for a moment to parse who is speaking -- Maiden herself? or one of the previous incarnations through her? -- before she realises that there is no distinction

They run at each other.

Maiden raises her daiklave.

Anja's claws extend fully.

They fall on each other.

It is a tipping point, a single moment of decision that will ripple across all the planes of reality. What happens next could change the course of the Age, of the great games the gods play in heaven. The moment is felt by those sensitive to such things across Creation and beyond. Even the Unconquered Sun pauses from his revels in Yu-Shan, sensing the possibility -- however remote -- of the return of one of his own. The Yozis in Malfeas scream out their lust for destruction, and the Neverborn tremble in the hearts of their Underworld kingdoms in resonance. The Mask of Winters feels a sudden chill, and realises that things could be even more cold and desolate than this life chosen so long ago already is.

Even as their eyes meet again, eyeball to eyeball, Anja doesn't know whether they will kiss or kill.

Until, suddenly, she does.


End file.
